South Sudan peace deal hailed amid skepticism

Published 7:25 pm, Saturday, May 10, 2014

South Sudan President Salva Kiir (left) and ex-Vice President Riek Machar hand over the treaty Friday.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir (left) and ex-Vice President Riek Machar hand over the treaty Friday.

Photo: Zacharias Abubeker, AFP/Getty Images

South Sudan peace deal hailed amid skepticism

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Nairobi, Kenya --

South Sudan's top U.N. aid official hailed a new peace deal Saturday and called for food assistance to blunt the risk of mass hunger. A military spokesman said a cease-fire would take hold, but wary skepticism remained.

The truce signed by President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar late Friday in neighboring Ethiopia calls for a cessation of hostilities and unhindered humanitarian access.

Though it is the second peace deal of the nearly five-month conflict, the two leaders did not attend talks that forged the first cease-fire in January. This time they stood face to face, a hopeful sign one week after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Kiir in South Sudan's capital and spoke to Machar by phone. Days later, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon flew in, adding to the pressure.

An analysis released Saturday by the World Food Program, Save the Children and South Sudan government found food needs deepening to "alarming" levels in areas isolated by conflict.

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"Calling on both parties to facilitate deliveries of emergency relief to people in need now: open roads for truck convoys & rivers for barges," Toby Lanzer, the top U.N. aid official in South Sudan, said on Twitter on Saturday.

The fighting, which has often pitted Kiir's ethnic Dinka against Machar's ethnic Nuer, has killed thousands of people, often in what a U.N. report recently said were violations of human rights "on a massive scale." More than 1.3 million people have fled their homes, and aid officials fear that mass hunger will set in this year.